Where were you?
by GoldSeven
Summary: Where were you on September 11, 2001? ... Hesam was right there.
1. Chapter 1

**Sparked by**: Hesam's resentment at being discriminated against because he's Iranian; and a tiny detail in _Acceptance_: A mug on the table in the EMT room of Mercy Heights Hospital, with the Star of Life on it alongside the Twin Towers, and the words: **Never forget – always remember.**

**Characters**: Peter, Hesam.

**Warnings**: 9/11 is a sensitive topic, I'm aware of this. I researched extensively (and if you know my usual level of research, you know what that means), and tried to stay true to everything I read, and to write a story as it was very likely to happen. This being about 9/11, there are disturbing themes. Proceed with caution.

**Author's Note**: If you want to know what I was doing on September 11, 2001, watch out for Hesam's sister Amina…

.

.

**Where were you?**

.

September 11, 2007

9 a. m.

.

"Sandra Patricia Campbell. Juan Ortega Campos. Sean Canavan. John A. Candela. Vincent Cangelosi…"

It was a cool but clear September morning, and Peter and Hesam stood leaning against the side door of their ambulance near Ground Zero, overlooking the large congregation of people that had gathered to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Theirs was one of two ambulances deployed to Zucotti Park, and like most others on that day, they stood in silence as the names of the people who had died in the attacks were being read by students of a hundred different nationalities. The only ones who were not standing and listening were a couple of kids running around near them, some of them too young to even remember 9/11, eyeing the ambulance with curiosity but too shy to come closer. Every now and than, one of them would kick a squashed beer can across the street, and earn a stern look or a word or two of rebuke from the adults around them.

They hadn't had much to do in the hour and a half they had been here. One elderly woman had felt light-headed but hadn't required transport; mostly, Peter suspected, she had required someone to talk to.

At three minutes past nine, there was a minute of silence to observe the time at which the second plane had crashed into the South Tower, and Hesam quickly made a step forwards to catch one of the kids by the collar, just before he could kick his can again. The boy looked at Hesam, thunderstruck, but Hesam just put a finger on his lips, jerking his head in the direction where the podium stood.

After this, the kids were quick to scuttle off to another part of the scene, presumably in search of another tin can. On the podium, bagpipes began to play as the minute of silence was over.

"Mommy, Mommy, I saw a real terrorist at Ground Zero today, pretending to be an ambulance driver," Hesam murmured under his breath, in a mock high voice, as he watched them disappearing.

Peter raised an eyebrow at him. "I think he was just surprised you caught him like that."

"Did you know there are people in this country who think 'terrorist' is a nationality?" Hesam asked bitterly.

Peter shrugged. "There are people in this country who think you can do your online shopping by inserting your credit card into a floppy drive."

Hesam burst out laughing before he could stop himself, causing a woman standing a few yards away from them to turn around and give him a cold stare. When she turned away from them again, Peter could clearly hear her say, in a stage whisper, "Insensitive to have _that_ kind here."

Hesam didn't say a word, but his mouth turned into a very thin line as he sobered immediately, staring fixedly at the podium.

"I'm sorry," Peter said quietly. "That was my fault."

Hesam shook his head. "Doesn't matter. It was probably a bad idea to dispatch us here."

"No, it's not," Peter protested, albeit quietly. "That's what this is all about."

They were silent for a moment, until Hesam turned to look at Peter again. "So, where were you?" he asked.

Peter's jaw worked as he watched the bagpipers leave the stage again, to be replaced by more students, more names.

"I was on a subway train. I'd just finished college. My father had gotten me an internship at St Luke's hospital, thinking if he couldn't get me to go to law school, I'd be a doctor, which he could just have lived with. What he didn't know was that I was getting into social work there." Peter stared ahead. "I was on my way to a patient in downtown Manhattan with one of the hospital's social workers when someone shouted that the WTC was on fire. He was on the phone or something, but then his connection was gone. The train then stopped, the conductor said there was some delay because of the fire. We had no idea what was really going on. We then got out, but by then, no taxis were going further downtown anymore, and our patient was somewhere down Park Row. While we were trying to figure out what had happened, we saw the South Tower collapse."

"Did you get to the patient?" Hesam asked.

"No. We got stuck in a diner with a TV."

Hesam just nodded.

Peter looked across at him. "And you? Where were you?" he asked.

Hesam turned to look at the space that, to most New Yorkers, still looked like a gaping wound in the cityscape. "Right here."

.

September 11, 2001

7.30 a. m.

.

"Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening – and I can't reach anyone at college; what am I gonna do?"

"Mina," Hesam said, putting down his butter knife, "Calm down."

"I was supposed to hand it in _yesterday_," Amina said, her voice near-hysterical, waving a piece of paper around. "I haven't even printed it out yet, not bound or anything – I thought I had until the fifteenth –"

"The fifteenth? And you never wondered that was a Saturday?"

"I never checked!"

"I thought you'd had your paper finished for weeks? Why didn't you hand it in before now?"

"Because I thought I had so much time left," Amina said, close to tears, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. "No idea why I thought it was the fifteenth – it says September 10 here—"

"It's one day late," Hesam tried to calm his sister. "Just have it bound today and hand it in right away."

"It can't be that easy," she said desperately, tapping on the paper, which bore an official-looking letterhead of Audrey Cohen College. "It says September 10, 12 p. m. here. You can't just drop off your thesis the next day if they even give you an exact time you're supposed to do it by!"

Nesrin, their mother, entered the kitchen, with a mug of coffee in her hand, ready to leave for school where she taught. "There should be someone in at eight o' clock, shouldn't there? Phone them, and explain to them. They'll accept the paper. Mina, they know you."

"Not at the office they don't," Amina wailed.

Nesrin looked at Hesam for help. "I have to go. Can you stay with Mina until eight o' clock?"

"_Maman_, I have to be at the ambulance service at eight," Hesam protested, around a mouthful of bread roll.

Amina burst into tears.

Hesam sighed. "I'll take my phone, OK? Call me when you know anything. Or need a shoulder to cry on."

Amina, nodded, sobbing.

Hesam gave her a hug, then stood up to get his uniform jacket. It was still cool outside, although the bright blue sky suggested that he wouldn't be needing a jacket later.

"Hey," he said to Amina. "Good luck, OK? It'll work out. They won't have you redo the thesis."

She suddenly looked embarrassed at making such a scene, in the light of what her brother had been through recently. "Thank you," she said quietly.

.

7.55 a. m.

.

Hesam arrived at work, mechanically reporting in at the supervisor's office and hearing Brian Kellerman had already got the keys and radios.

He hated this place, and wished he could just have got up the courage to quit. But since the small EMS company he was working for was short on personnel at the moment, he had decided to stay until the situation had cleared somewhat.

Five days previously, his preceptor, Jiao Wang, had tactfully suggested to him that maybe he should remain an EMT rather than becoming a paramedic.

His training had gone pretty well. He'd been with Jiao on Thursdays, and mostly, she had been content with his decisions and skills, although there had always been a certain amount of performance anxiety on his part on tough calls. Then, two weeks ago, it had been decided he was ready to be cut loose, dispatch had been informed to give them the best (read: most demanding) calls, and still things had gone well until last Tuesday, when he had finally been dispatched to the much-anticipated and much-dreaded cardiac arrest.

There, everything had gone wrong from the start. Hesam had made the decision to work the patient on the spot, which might even have worked, if he had been able to get the tube. He missed on his first attempt, put it in the oesophagus on the second, and, panicked, was about to try for a third time when Jiao gently nudged him into loading their patient and getting him to the hospital. He had gone for the tube again in the ambulance, and had failed again, upon which Jiao had put the tube in. The man had been pronounced dead in the hospital.

He'd been devastated, half fearing, half hoping for a second chance the following Thursday. He got it when they were dispatched for a difficulty breathing that turned out to be a twenty-two year old woman with asthma, whose vocal cords were clenched so tightly that even Jiao had had difficulty passing the tube, which she did after Hesam had failed twice. Following the disaster of two days previously, he had decided they'd load and go immediately, which had been right on principle, but the patient hadn't got any oxygen for about twenty minutes. She'd coded in the car; they'd got a rhythm back twice, only to lose her again each time. In the cardiac room, they had worked her for half an hour, while her sobbing parents and stunned boyfriend watched, before she had been called dead.

Jiao had offered Hesam to call in for the rest of the shift, but Hesam had refused, to miss two more IVs on their next two calls.

Now Hesam was back to being an EMT, after both Jiao and the supervisor had suggested that he didn't cope well enough under pressure.

"Hiya!" Brian Kellerman greeted him brightly. He was a blond, beefy young man with a perpetual good humour and a large frame that enabled him to carry anyone just under pot whale proportions down from the fourth floor, priding himself on never having called for lift assist. He was a great guy to have around, even if Hesam hadn't been able to tolerate his great mood very well recently.

"Hey, Brian," Hesam answered a lot more noncommittally, but Brian didn't mind. There were very few things that Brian minded. "All set?"

"Yep," Brian replied. "We're good to go."

"Did you gas up?"

"Yep."

"Spare oxygen?"

"Yep."

"Blood pressure cuffs?"

Brian scratched his head. "Damn."

Hesam rolled his eyes and went to get them.

They cleared at a few minutes to eight, and were dispatched almost immediately for a maternity call. On the way, Hesam's phone rang.

Brian, who was driving, raised an eyebrow at Hesam. "Should you have that on?"

"It's an emergency." Hesam pulled out the phone. "Mina?"

"I just called the registrar's office, they were being terrible – I asked them if I could come in and explain—"

"All right, calm down, OK? Did they say yes?"

"Yeah, but..."

"See. They just want you to feel as horrible as possible. But they'll give you a chance. Got the thing printed?"

"Printer's running."

"Great. It'll work out fine, OK? I'll call you back when I'm on a break."

"When is that?"

"Aw, Mina, you know it could be anything."

"A quarter past nine tonight!" Brian called over.

"I'll give you a call. Before lunchtime. I promise." Glaring at Brian, Hesam hung up, and put the phone into the pocket of his uniform jacket.

"Does your sister know lunch could be after nine p. m. too?" Brian asked.

"_Her_ lunchtime."

"Ah. OK."

The maternity call was for a twenty-two-weeks pregnant woman who had a stomach ache. Hesam did have the impression that this might have had to do with the numerous junk food wrappers he saw in the woman's untidy kitchen, but she insisted she needed to see a doctor, could not walk, and so they ended up carrying her downstairs in the stairchair and driving her to the New York Downtown Hospital – after a short trip to the NY_U_ Downtown Hospital, which turned out to be the wrong one. Hesam was glad to finally unload her and put her in the waiting room at the NY Downtown. He was sweating, and pulled off his jacket and hung it over his seat.

It was a quarter to nine.


	2. Chapter 2

8.46 a. m.

.

They sat in the truck to write up the paperwork when suddenly they heard and felt a distinct _boom_, followed by people shouting in the street.

Rescue worker's instincts kicked in immediately as both Hesam and Brian jumped out of the truck, thinking of an accident, but they soon saw that people were pointing some three hundred yards west, where smoke was billowing from the World Trade Center's North Tower.

"Holy shit," Brian breathed.

Hesam grabbed the run report he'd sent flying when he'd rushed out of the truck, and slammed it back on the seat, reaching for the radio.

"Dispatch? Foxtrot-298 here. There's a fire in 1 WTC."

He could hear a lot of talking in the background on the other end, before a female voice came back, "We're getting a lot of calls about this right now. Where are you? In the building?"

"No, we're at the NY Downtown Hospital."

A slight pause. "Are you clear?"

"Yeah," Hesam said, deciding the paperwork could wait. "We are."

"Stand by, OK?" There was a crackle of static, and then she was gone.

Hesam and Brian waited for half a minute, but nobody came back to them.

"Drive!" Hesam shouted, getting into the car. A fire engine flashed past them, and he heard more sirens nearby.

"They didn't get our clearance," Brian said, hitting the accelerator.

Hesam got on the radio again. "Dispatch, F-298. We're clear, and a couple of blocks out from the World Trade Center."

He waited, again hearing a lot of very loud and hectic voices at the other end, until a different voice than the last time came back, "F-298, respond to 1 WTC."

Hesam acknowledged, and Brian said, his voice tight, "You think it's another bomb?"

"No idea," Hesam answered. "Watch out!"

A man on a bike had misjudged their speed and hadn't braked fast enough, and Brian cursed as he veered around sharply to avoid collision.

As they turned into Liberty Street, they saw a lot of people running away from the towers, but it still looked somewhat orderly. This was New York, after all. There were several who were walking almost unhurriedly.

Hesam shielded his eyes and looked up at the tower. There was a lot of smoke there, more than he would have expected from a fire on simply a floor or two.

The first fire engines had arrived on scene, and Hesam could see the firefighters jumping out, regrouping briefly, and then proceeding into the building. Another ambulance was parked across the street, loading a patient. Hesam saw no burn victims, and realised there wouldn't be any at this time. The only injured at this point would have been hurt in the jostle to leave the building.

"Hey!" Hesam turned to see an FDNY EMS supervisor coming towards them. "You were dispatched here?"

"Yeah."

"No EMS personnel are to enter the building at this point. An Incident Command Post is being set up over at the North Tower at West Street. Relocate there and wait for orders. We're having problems with the dispatch channels." And he was gone.

Hesam got into the truck again, and Brian drove before he'd had time to strap in.

A tent was being put up outside the North Tower, where several people with minor injuries were being treated by ambulance crews. Hesam and Brian tried to find out what had happened while treating a near-hysterical young woman with a dislocated shoulder, who told them she'd taken the stairs down from the ninth floor. She said people were talking about a bomb, like back in 1993. She'd heard others who swore they'd seen a plane.

.

9.03 a. m.

.

They loaded the woman into the ambulance, and an FDNY EMT shoved a young man in who had a nasty-looking cut on his forehead, telling them to transport him too. The man looked as if he might have a concussion, and Hesam put him on the board and collared him, sitting the woman on the bench. Brian jumped out to get to the front and drive, when Hesam heard a loud roar from overhead. People were screaming. Hesam craned his neck, but couldn't see much through the small patch of windscreen.

He jumped out the back door, and the first thing he saw was Brian's baby-face staring up at a plane that seemed to fill up the entire sky. It was way too large. Way too low. At first, Hesam thought it would just roar past, but then it turned, sharp, and crashed into the South Tower.

"My God," he whispered.

Brian was motionless, slack-jawed, completely immobilised with shock.

"Go!" Hesam shouted at him, yanking at his sleeve. "Go, go, go, go, _go_!"

He stayed in back, and Brian drove. They were having a hard time getting a destination from dispatch. Finally, they were told to transport to Saint Vincent's, where they unloaded their patients, made sure they were seen by overtaxed-looking nurses, and went back to the car again.

"What do we do about run forms?" Brian shouted.

"You drive," Hesam told him. "Go back. I'll worry about the rest."

He made quick notes on the run forms, of the patients' names and most important data, writing on his knees. The never-finished run form from the previous maternity call, crumpled and trodden on, also got a very quick treatment, and Hesam shoved all of them into his bag.

It was impossible by then to get through to dispatch, so they just went back to where the command post had been, but as they pulled up, it was gone.

"Fuck, what happened here?" Brian screamed, as he got out of the car and stared up at the Twin Towers, both of which were burning and issuing fat, black smoke.

The radio channel was dead; Hesam even tried his phone, but the lines must be completely overloaded. Of course – all over the city, people would be trying to call each other, find out whether their loved ones in the World Trade Center were still alive. Hesam realised that his family were probably trying frantically to reach him, too. But there was no way he could get a message to them now, to tell them he was all right.

"The command post must have relocated," Hesam said, his mind racing. "It was too close to the tower. Let's find someone who can tell us!"

He looked around. There still were people streaming from the towers, firefighters on the ground between the buildings, and there was debris raining from the upper floors.

Hesam's heart nearly stopped when he realised that it wasn't debris.

They were people.

He saw at least three plummeting from the windows of the North Tower, around the hundredth floor. One was on fire.

He forced himself to tear his eyes away from the sight, but found it impossible to tear his mind from it, contemplating what drove a person to throw themselves from a window nine hundred feet up.

From what had started as a normal, lovely day, they had all suddenly found themselves in the middle of what could only be described as a war zone.

"Help! Help!" someone shouted a few yards away from them. Hesam had to shake himself before he was even able to get himself to focus. It was like a movie you didn't want to watch, and were unable to change the channel.

Two firefighters were carrying a man in his forties, blackened by soot and obviously burnt in several places. Hesam automatically opened the back door, and helped the firefighters to put the man on the stretcher. The man's skin hung in shreds around his left arm, and he was whimpering in pain. As far as Hesam could tell, his injuries weren't life-threatening, but extremely painful.

He didn't have anything to take the pain away. As a basic unit, they didn't carry morphine.

"Where're we s'posed to take him?" he shouted at one of the firefighters. The other was already going back.

The man gave him an incredulous look. "If _you_ don't know?" he said, and turned to follow his co-worker.

Hesam shouted to Brian in front to just start driving when they were flagged down by a supervisor, who said that several triage areas had been set up around the site, and told them to take their patient to the area by the South Tower. Hesam was almost glad, in all this chaos, to finally have some sort of direction.

They unloaded their patient at the triage area, where he was treated by a paramedic and a nurse, and they were given a woman with severe head injuries, to be taken to the NYU Downtown.

As he had done before, Hesam stayed in back with their patient, although there was very little he could actually do. He was bagging her, but wasn't getting much air into her lungs. He had no advanced airway equipment, nothing to intubate, when she went asystole. He didn't carry epinephrine. All he could do was do compressions, keep bagging, and watch her die.

The Emergency Department of the NYU Downtown was in disarray, there were way too many patients there, as dispatch systems, hospitals, and EMS personnel had almost no way to communicate with each other. Brian and Hesam rushed their patient into a crowded corridor, where it took almost fifteen minutes before they got hold of a doctor, who looked at the monitor and pronounced the woman dead.

Devastated, but almost detached, they went back to the car. Hesam pulled out a new run form and didn't even get as far as the patient's name. She hadn't had any identification with her. He quickly filled in some of the information on treatment, wrote _?35-40_ in the "age" blank, and put a question mark where the name was supposed to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**9.52 a. m.**

They were back at the site ten minutes later, going back to the triage area by the South Tower. The fires were still burning, and as they went into the tent that had been set up there, carrying their stretcher, they saw that there were more and more burn victims now, as people from the floors close to the impact zones had been evacuated.

"And we'll be gettin' a lot more," a paramedic from the Presbyterian Hospital predicted grimly as he got ready to help them transfer a man with severe burns to their stretcher, to be transported to the Cornell Burn Center in uptown Manhattan. "That was no accident. It was an attack. And whoever staged it made sure they did the greatest possible damage."

"Who could that be?" Brian asked, his eyes wide.

"Terrorists. Two aircraft flown into the Twin Towers within fifteen minutes? With that sort of precision? People are talking al-Qaeda."

The paramedic gave the patient another round of morphine, for which Hesam was infinitely grateful, and they set out to carry him to their truck, which was parked sixty yards away, Hesam at the head end, Brian at the patient's feet. They were almost at the car when there was a deafening sound behind them.

It was unlike anything Hesam had ever heard. It wasn't a bang, or a blast, or a boom. It was a screaming of steel and concrete. It sounded like the roar of a living thing, and he knew it would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He cast one look over his shoulder and saw the South Tower collapse behind him.

It didn't sway, or if it did, he didn't see it. It just _sank_. The huge smoke cloud on its top came down along with it, like a giant tree of smoke and concrete and steel just disappearing into the ground. Where it hit, dust billowed up. All around him, people were shouting and screaming. Even after everything they had seen that day, this had seemed unthinkable.

Hesam felt the stretcher being pushed into his hip as Brian, at the foot end, made a lurch forward, and he started running, still holding on to the stretcher, when he felt the other end drop. He yelled at Brian to pick it up again, but there were people everywhere now, running and screaming, and he couldn't see his partner. There were shouts of "Mayday, Mayday" from supervisors and firefighters. The dust cloud, spraying debris, was a hundred feet away. Hesam tried to pull the stretcher up so he could move it on his own, but the mechanism was jammed, or maybe he was shaking too much. He managed to grab the arm of a firefighter running past him. The man stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Help me!" Hesam shouted.

After a fraction of a second, the man nodded, got the back end of the stretcher, and together, they ran on. Another man saw them as they stumbled along, barely ahead of the dust, the stretcher bumping and bucking, and he ran up to the head end, taking the left side as Hesam moved to the right, so they could move more steadily. Hesam could see the firefighter in the back being jostled by people trying to push past him, but he didn't let go.

The dust was everywhere then, though not as thick out here as Hesam had feared. He could still see, even if everything looked as through milky glass. Every now and then, there were patches of thicker smoke and ash, which sent him bumping into people. Papers were flying like leaves, some scorched, some burning.

The dust was warm.

He pulled up the t-shirt he was wearing under his shirt, to cover his mouth and nose, as he ran on, remembering to pull a piece of blanket over the patient's face, too.

Hesam didn't know how long they had been running. The firefighter peeled off at one point when an FDNY officer yelled at him to regroup, and Hesam cast a pleading look at the other man who had stepped in to help earlier. He looked to be around fifty, and was sweating profusely, but he nodded, got to the back, and continued to help carrying the patient. They slowed when most people did, when it became apparent that the dust wasn't getting any thicker, that they'd left the dust cloud behind. Hesam's eyes were streaming, his lashes sticking together whenever he blinked. His previously dark blue pants nearly looked the colour of his white shirt. The dust clung to everything, caking the burn wounds of the man on the stretcher. Hesam could even taste it in his mouth. He ripped open his bag, got out some saline, and flushed the patient's wounds with the clear fluid while he checked for his pulse. He almost couldn't believe it when he found he was still alive, although he was barely breathing. The IV line was still in place, although he hadn't got much fluid through it, since they'd put the bag between his legs for transport.

Hesam looked around for Brian but wasn't surprised that he couldn't see him anywhere. Their truck, of course, was gone, probably buried under dust and debris now.

"You need help?" the other man puffed, coughing.

"Yes," Hesam said gratefully. He pulled up the stretcher again, and this time, the device worked. "Hold up the IV bag for me, OK? I need to ventilate him."

The man nodded at once, held up the bag of saline, and got to the patient's feet again, as Hesam pulled at the front, bagging him with the ambu-bag every minute or so.

Another supervisor finally spotted them and told them to go to South Ferry, where another triage area/field hospital was being set up.

.

**10.20 a. m.**

They reached South Ferry some ten minutes later, helped by another man in his twenties, who helped pulling the stretcher the last two hundred yards. The new triage area, Hesam realised, was far from finished. There were some logistical support vehicles from nearby hospitals, giving out replacement equipment, there were a lot of medical personnel, a lot of people being treated for coughs and difficulty breathing because of the smoke, walking wounded, but again, very few severely injured.

An EMT from the Presbyterian came rushing over to help Hesam when she saw him pulling in a badly burnt patient. Hesam remembered to thank the two men who had helped him so far, and then looked around quickly for fresh gloves while the EMT continued to bag the patient. She had great difficulty squeezing the ambu-bag.

"I'm not getting any air in," she said, panting.

Hesam took over, and found he couldn't, either.

He thought for a second, then ran over to one of the support units. "I need new gloves," he told the woman in the truck, who was handing out equipment. "And an airway kit."

She never asked any questions, just gave him a packet of several pairs of disposable gloves along with an airway kit. Either she didn't notice the letters "EMT" on his back, or assumed he was getting the equipment for a doctor or paramedic. He signed the piece of paper she gave him, knowing there would be trouble later once anyone tried to make any sense of this madness, but there was no time to see if any paramedic or doctor was free to help.

He returned to their patient, whose heart sounds were failing, and pulled a laryngoscope from the bag. "Give me a size eight tube," he told the other EMT. "Size four Miller blade."

The woman complied, and Hesam went in with the laryngoscope. There was whitish muck everywhere from all the dust the man had breathed in. Hesam swept the tongue to the side, and saw the cords, passing the tube between them, without ever thinking about what he was doing.

"Bag," he said, pulling a stethoscope from the kit, and listened to the man's lungs as the EMT bagged. Lung sounds to the right. Lung sounds to the left. Nothing over the stomach. He was in. He couldn't see if the man's colour was picking up, as his face was grey under a thin layer of dust despite the sheet, but at least he was getting oxygen now.

The EMT was looking at him curiously, and he was about to start explaining when he suddenly heard a lot of shouting and screaming, and looked up sharply. The very first thing that had crossed his mind was a third plane. Then he saw that everyone was staring north, where the sole remaining tower was collapsing.

Even though he had seen it before, it was nothing he'd been prepared for. Like the South Tower, it just dropped out of sight, leaving a huge plume of dust and smoke in the sky where the Twin Towers had stood. Hesam saw people crying, staring with their hands over their mouths, and holding each other. He felt sick when he realised how many people must still have been in the buildings when they had collapsed.

A doctor soon told him to wheel his patient into the tent, where others took over, and he simply stood there at the entrance for a few minutes, staring at the piece of empty sky to the north. His partner was gone, his ambulance was gone, and his mind felt wiped blank.

Another supervisor assigned him to an ALS car some time later – he didn't know how much later; it was only that afternoon that he tried to look at his watch for the first time in hours and had to wipe dust off it. The paramedic from the Cabrini Hospital had left his partner behind at the other triage area at the sports centre, and stared at Hesam, who was still covered in pale grey dust and who now realised he had to look like some sort of spectre. "My God, man," he whispered. "You were in there?"

Hesam shook his head as he climbed into the ambulance. "I was across the square when the South Tower fell. I'm OK." His found that his voice sounded hoarse, hardly like his own, and cleared his throat. There was still the taste of dust. "You got any water?"

The paramedic was still staring, and visibly shook himself. "Sure." He pulled a near-full water bottle from the cup holder in the door and gave it to Hesam, who drained it nearly in one go. The paramedic then gave him some more saline, to at least clear his eyes. The saline didn't do much, Hesam noted. Instead of a scratchy film over his eyes, he was now trying to see through a muddy film. It was a lot less uncomfortable, but he saw even less.

The man held a hand out to him. "I'm Joe."

"Hesam."

"What's that?"

"He-_sam_," Hesam repeated patiently. It wasn't as if this reaction was new.

"What's that, Pakistani?"

"Iranian."

Joe's reaction was unlike anything Hesam had ever got before. It was so unusual that it took him a moment before he could place it. It was heart-felt respect.

"I'm honoured to ride with you," Joe said.

.

**Afternoon**

A supervisor sent them up to Battery Park, where citywide EMS systems were regrouping, to bring in more patients to the triage areas. Communication was by now completely gone. The streets were almost deserted, the only vehicles being police, fire department, and ambulances.

Hesam, together with Joe, continued to pick up and transport patients to the triage areas, but soon, the flow stopped. Most people just asked for breath masks; by early afternoon, there were very few who were seriously injured. It soon dawned on them that the masses of wounded that everyone was expecting would never come, as hundreds, probably thousands had died within seconds in the collapse of the towers, without even the slightest chance of survival.

By mid-afternoon, people had gathered all along West Street, which linked the field hospitals to the debris-filled plaza, soon to be known as the Pile by the rescue workers, where the World Trade Center had stood. They were holding up signs, passing food and water to the rescue workers, cheering them. _Cheering_. Both Hesam and Joe had tears in their eyes when they went up West Street for the first time.

Joe had a cell phone, and he and Hesam tried to call their families several times during the afternoon, without success. It was past five p. m. when Hesam finally had the chance to use a phone that worked, at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery Park, and dialled his parents' number.

"Yes," he heard his mother's voice almost immediately, choked with fear.

"_Maman_," he said. "It's me. I'm OK. I'm fine."

She was crying with relief after his first word.

.

.

When Hesam had finished, both he and Peter were silent for a long while.

Finally, Peter asked, "What about Brian? Do you know what happened to him?"

"He got out," Hesam replied. "I met him again that evening, when the rescue workers who'd been on duty during the day were being put up in temporary quarters at the pier. Manhattan was still closed off at the time, and I couldn't get home." His eyes were far away. "Brian was completely in shock. I'd never seen him like this. He didn't get out as quickly as I did. He was coughing all through the night. He quit the service about two months later. Last I heard, he's still having trouble with his lungs.

"After a couple of hours' sleep, I went back to the Pile, for another two shifts or so before they pulled me off. None of us wanted to go home. We were hanging around there, waiting for survivors to be found under the rubble. There were so few. I didn't see any of them. Most of the time, it was body bags.

"The weeks and months after 9/11 were surreal. At times I felt like I was two different people. When I was in uniform, I was one of New York's heroes. People I'd never seen clapped me on the back, let me get to the front of any line I was waiting in, shopkeepers gave me sandwiches and drinks for free. As soon as I was out of uniform, I was the enemy."

Again, there was a long silence.

Peter looked over to Hesam. "But you went on to be a paramedic."

"I told my preceptor that I was ready to give it another go, and they let me. I was cut loose three weeks later. I got a disciplinary hearing about my intubating without being allowed to. They let me off lightly, but I was still fined enough money to eat up most of what I earned more as a paramedic for about a year. I've had times where I've wanted to quit. You get them in this job more than in most others, I guess. But whenever I get a bullshit call to a person who calls an ambulance to get to their doctor's appointment rather than call a taxi, I think back to all that happened on that day.

"I think of a complete stranger just jumping in and helping me carry a stretcher. I think of people lining the way to the Pile, cheering rescue workers driving past on West Street.

"And it reminds me of what I'm supposed to do."


End file.
